Arson in America: Arsonists work a cruel calendar across the nation

Memphis, Tenn., firefighter Ron Clement works with other firefighters to put out a house fire in Memphis. The fire destroyed the vacant home that was slated for renovation, and, according to Battalion Chief John Distretti, appeared to have been intentionally set.

SHNS photo by A.J. Wolfe / The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal

SHNS graphic by John Bruce

Arsonists in America burn according to a cruel calendar.

They set fire to buildings in alarming numbers on holidays such as Independence Day, Halloween and New Year's Day. But a first-of-its-kind study, conducted by Scripps Howard News Service, indicates that arsonists also favor this week in April.

Scripps studied 71,356 intentionally set building fires reported to the U.S. Fire Administration from 2006 through 2011 and uncovered a surge of arsons committed during the seven days around April 15, the day when most Americans file their federal taxes.

This mid-April incendiary glut blazes to a crescendo on April 19, when 275 building arsons were committed during the six-year period, 40 percent above the average daily rate.

"I can't see this as a coincidence," concluded Special Agent Philip Awe, a 28-year veteran of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and head of its Detroit arson unit. "This is such a jump in the numbers, there must be something behind it."

But Awe and other fire experts were at a loss to explain the increase.

"Some serial offenders set fires on anniversary dates which are specific and known only to them, such as the anniversary of a death in the family or some other significant event," said Detective Ed Nordskog of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's arson squad and author of "Torched Minds," a study of repeat arsonists. "Most serial offenders set fires during periods of emotional stress, such as holidays, or shortly after a setback in their life — loss of job, failed relationship, et cetera.

"I have no explanation whatsoever for the April spike in fires," he said.

Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Sean Carney was surprised when he realized that four of his five high-profile serial-arson cases in the last four years involved fire sprees in mid-April or around New Year's Day. "It's weird," he said.

In one of Carney's bigger cases, Joshua Ethan Thomas pleaded guilty on multiple counts after he was charged with setting 18 fires April 14-16, 2011.

Thomas "felt there was a firefighter who treated him disrespectfully. He lit the fires at night just because he believed that firefighter worked the night shift. He told us he just wanted to keep that guy busy," Carney said.

So-called "Hollywood arsonist" Harry Burkart was convicted after setting 52 fires from Dec. 30, 2011, to Jan. 2, 2012. "He was just on a rampage and kind of hoped people would rise up against the government, sort of to help free his mom," who was being deported to Germany on fraud charges, Carney said.

Deliberately set building fires are a threat to public safety and welfare. Arsons reported to the U.S. government during this six-year period resulted in at least 499 deaths, 5,200 injuries and $1.9 billion in property loss.

According to the Scripps analysis, America's worst arson day is July 5 — with 322 fires — followed closely by July 4 with 315 fires, both 60 percent above average.

Every state has its own arson calendar, but Independence Day and the morning after are the worst days in Arkansas, California, Illinois, Nevada, Indiana and the District of Columbia.

"The Fourth of July? Gunpowder, alcohol and testosterone — a very potent mix," said Adam Brooke Davis, a Truman State University folklorist who has studied the origins of so-called "hell nights," when arsonists take to the streets.

"Everyone who's been awake in the arson business knows and hears about hell night, at least once a year," said Michael Donahue, the top arson specialist at the U.S. Fire Administration.

But some fire officials, like Texas State Fire Marshal Chris Connealy, said they didn't know arsonists become more active on specific holidays, when there often is a spike in fires of all kinds. "We'll make local fire marshals aware of it," he said.

Devil's Night started in 1984, "when the Detroit Tigers won the World Series and the kids started tearing up everything," said Fire Marshal Ralph Martin of the Saginaw, Mich., Fire Department.

Davis grew up in Detroit and watched Devil's Night transform from a relatively innocent night of mischief into "a festival of destruction," as the folklorist put it. Scripps found that, over time, peak arson activity throughout Michigan has shifted a day to Halloween.

Anthropologists say that Halloween, Fourth of July and even New Year's Day — the worst time for arson in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana — are classic "inversion festivals," when people are allowed to misbehave a little with alcohol and fireworks, Davis said.

"Periodically, there are sort of steam-valve opportunities where the people on the bottom get to remind the people on the top that there are limits to their power," Davis said. "If the people on the top are wise, they cooperate with those inversion festivals."

In some communities, Davis noted, these well-intentioned festivals have become "sort of an arsonist's holiday" for groups of underemployed, unemployed and hopeless inner-city youth who see "no good reason not to burn down their neighborhoods."

Dian Williams, founder of the Philadelphia-based Center for Arson Research, said that hell-night-fire starters are delinquent teenagers and young adults who drink and use drugs in groups. She has interviewed hundreds of arsonists and said juveniles set about half of the nation's intentional fires.

"They use the ambiance of the hell-night event to support one another in really dangerous, really stupid behaviors," Williams said.

But there are no holidays that Americans celebrate during the mid-April arson spike. Speculation by arson investigators understandably focuses on the possibility of tax and business fraud.

"I've investigated numerous fires where tax records were destroyed at businesses and, yes, some of them occurred in this time window," said Awe at the ATF's Detroit office. "If you are trying to avoid tax payments, arson is one way to destroy records."

Some fire experts say they are particularly intrigued by the large number of blazes started on April 19, which is also called Patriots' Day. It marks the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War, the battles of Lexington and Concord, Mass.

But it also happens to be the anniversary both of the 1993 assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, by federal agents and of terrorist Timothy McVeigh's 1995 bloody response by bombing Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and killing 168 men, women and children.

"That date — April 19 — does have some resonance with some groups in our population. No question," said Frank Scafidi, spokesman for the National Insurance Crime Bureau, which advises insurers about claims for suspicious fires. "But could that be showing up in the arson data? Who knows? We just don't have the depth of information necessary to study this question."

University of Tennessee arson scholar David Icove said the Scripps study should tell police and fire officials one thing: Hell-night investigations shouldn't wait until morning.